As modern conveniences have increased, so have the pace of life and the distances between loved ones, friends and business associates. People have become more transient, and a truly global marketplace has emerged. Due to the rapid technological advancements of recent years and the associated changes in how people conduct their personal and business affairs, the general public's interest in buying and obtaining products and information remotely has increased significantly. On a personal level, many people now buy gifts through long distance telephonic retail services or over the internet. As a result, a gift giver may never see or touch the gift, which is typically sent directly from a warehouse or retail store directly to the intended recipient. There is virtually no opportunity for the gift giver to add a “personal touch” to the gift of any kind. In the business world, it is often the case that products or information are sent to a customer directly from a third-party supplier without a truly personal touch from the sending party. For example, sending flowers from a recipient in one city to a recipient in another city. For businesses to gain and keep customers in today's competitive marketplace, a personal touch may be the deciding factor. Therefore, in both the personal and the commercial context, it is often desirable to provide a custom, personalized voice message with a gift, product or other information being sent to a recipient.
To this end, several voice message recording systems have been contemplated in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,719,920 and 5,826,235 disclose a system for remote recording of a personal audio greeting as compressed, digital data onto a “communication package.” With this system, the greeting is stored in the programming device, or “unitized interface system,” and then provided to the communication package as compressed, digital data; thereby necessitating that the circuitry of both the unitized interface system and the communication package contain components needed to transmit and store this compressed, digital data, causing the system to be relatively more complex, expensive and physically larger.
Other examples of voice message recording systems known in the art include U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,698, which proposes that a customer's personal audio message be recorded from an answering machine onto a separate voice chip, or read-only memory device, that would then be inserted into a greeting card having the balance of the electronics for playback of the message pre-installed in the card, while U.S. Pat. No. 5,444,767 proposes that the entire voice message playback circuitry be pre-installed in a greeting card, ornament, stuffed animal, or the like. Thus, with these systems, all or a portion of the voice message playback circuitry is pre-installed in the card, gift or product being sent to a recipient, causing these systems to be bulky, inflexible and less adaptable to the needs of individuals and businesses alike.
The present inventor's U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,203,287 and 7,535,996 set forth solutions to the problems of the prior art by using a hardware based recorder/imprinter to transfer voice messages from a sender using a handset, telephone line, or internet onto a voice module. The voice module with the sender's voice message is then inserted into a gift or card, allowing the recipient to hear the sender's voice message along with the accompanying gift, card, etc. However, while these devices have experienced commercial success, the present inventor has discovered that there are issues with a hardware-based solution such as the recorder/imprinter that pose difficulties when, say, updates are needed. With hundreds or thousands of units located throughout the country, this represents a major expenditure of time and resources. Accordingly, the present invention seeks to overcome that problem.